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Herschel Recognized it First

An early proponent of the Sun’s effect on the Earth, its temperature and climate, was the astronomer Herschel, 1738 – 1822. Among his many achievements, Herschel discovered infrared radiation from the sun.

Now, with the CERN experiments and the paper published in December on the theory behind how cosmic rays form clouds,there is both empirical and theoretical evidence that the sun affects the temperature and climate of the Earth.

While Herschel did not speak directly about cosmic rays, he established that the price of wheat and other grains were linked to the number of sunspots: If there were few sunspots, the price of wheat would be high. If there were more sunspots, the price of wheat would be low.

He proposed that fewer sunspots resulted in colder temperatures, and poorer growing conditions, while more sunspots resulted in higher temperatures and better crop yield.

Then, Walter Maunder, in 1922, linked the lack of sunspots between 1645 and 1715, to the bitter cold of that period known as the little ice age.

Maunder Minimum

In 1998 Svensmark published his paper describing how sunspots affected the entry of cosmic rays into the earth’s atmosphere, and how they, in turn, affected cloud formation, where more low-level clouds would reflect sunlight and lower the Earth’s temperature.

As expected, there was considerable effort to disprove Svensmark’s hypothesis as it contradicted the CO2 hypothesis where atmospheric CO2 was thought to cause global warming.

The debate surrounding the Svensmark hypothesis led to an experiment at the CERN research center.

This premier research center conducted an experiment to determine whether cosmic rays could form clouds and under what conditions cloud formation would occur.

The results of the CLOUD experiment established two facts.

The first put an end to the long-held belief that there were fewer clouds before the industrial revolution

The second proved cosmic rays could form clouds

This provided empirical evidence in support of Svensmark’s hypothesis.

With the CERN experiment supporting the Svensmark hypothesis, there was a renewed effort to disprove it.

Once again, proponents of the CO2 hypothesis turned to computer models and the computers obliged by establishing that cosmic rays could not form clouds.

Faced with this new challenge, Svensmark and his team went to work to develop the theory that would support the results of the CERN experiment. They wondered why empirical evidence showed that cosmic rays could form clouds while the computer models said they couldn’t?

They published their latest paper in Nature Communications on December 19, 2017, explaining the theory of cloud formation by cosmic rays.

Computers are wholly dependent on the algorithms and information fed to them. Bad inputs result in faulty outputs, as commonly described as “garbage in, garbage out.”

Sketch from the paper describing the formation of low-level clouds by cosmic rays modulated by the effects of sunspots.

Quoting from an article by Svensmark and Nir Shaviv:

“The link between solar activity and climate: A more active sun reduces the amount of cosmic rays coming from supernovae around us in the galaxy. The cosmic rays are the dominant source of atmospheric ionization. It turns out that these ions play an important role in (a) increasing the nucleation of small condensation nuclei (a few nm) and (b) increasing the growth rate of the condensation nuclei (which is the effect just published). The larger growth rates imply that they are less likely to stick to pre-existing aerosols and thus have a larger chance of reaching the sizes of cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs, typically > 50 nm in diameter). Thus, a more active sun decreases the formation of CCNs, making the clouds less white, reflecting less sunlight and therefore warming Earth.”
(Nir Shaviv has published papers describing how cosmic rays have caused ice ages as the Earth passed through areas of the Milky Way galaxy.)

The paper published in Nature Communications demonstrates that sunspots affect cloud formation and temperatures and that this mechanism is several times more powerful in controlling the Earth’s temperature than is the sun’s irradiance or atmospheric levels of CO2.

We now have a well-documented hypothesis based on both theoretical study and experimentation that provides a more scientifically supported rationale for global warming and climate change than does the CO2 hypothesis.

The brochure, We Have Nothing to Fear from CO2, available on this website, provides the history of Earth’s temperatures and additional details on why CO2 is good for mankind and more information on the Svensmark hypothesis.

Note: The article, Finally! The missing link between exploding stars, clouds and climate on Earth, by Henrik Svensmark and Nir Shavi, is available at http://bit.ly/2DVGA8T

4 Replies to “Herschel Recognized it First”

It all boils down to one idea with a computer.
GIGO. Garbage in, Garbage out. If you feed it adulterated information, or a badly tweaked program, you will get garbage out.
Sometimes the garbage is intentional.

Thanks. There is a link to the paper at the end of the article. I usually avoid linking to studies as the links detract from the article itself. I always try to supply them when asked.
I’m frustrated by the quality of the graphics, and I am trying to find a way to increase the resolution of existing graphics. Do you have any suggestions re increasing the resolution of graphics. I’m not good at photoshop and lack skill in this area.